


Rise of the Metalheads

by JFranks



Category: Black Mirror (TV)
Genre: Computer Programming, Dogs, Gen, drones, metalhead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 03:46:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JFranks/pseuds/JFranks
Summary: My partner and I watched the "Metalhead" episode of Black Mirror the other day. She desperately wanted to know how the dogs came to be, how the humans and the pigs were wiped out, what happened to the world.Here's a little bit of fan fiction that gives some background to series 4, episode 5 of Black Mirror, "Metalhead," describing how the metalheads came to be.





	Rise of the Metalheads

"Once we got them to stand up after they fell over," Dr. Martin said, "getting the rest of our funding wasn't that hard." He approached one of the sleek "dogs" and pushed it over. The dog pivoted and scrambled to its feet. It was the least graceful action the robot performed, but it worked.  
"The applications are limitless. We have dozens of patents already for military development, and even more for the private sector, which is why you're here." Martin gestured at a pair of chairs next to his desk.  
Martin's assistant guided Melissa to one of the chairs. Melissa sat and leaned her cane against the side of the chair, then Vicky excused herself and left the room. Martin remained standing.  
"I'm looking forward to being a beta tester," Melissa said. "It'll be nice to have a service helper that won't kill me with my allergies. I'm deathly allergic to dogs."  
Martin smiled. "Just one of its many benefits." He patted his leg. "Number four, come here."  
The robotic dog trotted silently to Martin's side and stood next to him. It made a soft, pleasant chime sound.  
"Number four," Martin said, "add a new user."  
The dog chimed again and a green LED glowed on its head.  
"Say your name, Melissa."  
"Melissa May," she said.  
The chime sounded again and the LED linked.  
"Again, please," Martin said.  
"Melissa May."  
The LED changed to white, blinked three times, then went out.  
"You're programmed as a user now," Martin said. "Give it a command."  
"Sit," Melissa said. Nothing happened.  
Martin chuckled. "No, no. Firstly, it doesn't need to sit. It won't get tired or uncomfortable. And you need to address it by its operating identifier before the command, just like using Alexa."  
"Number four, come here," Melissa said.  
The dog walked to Melissa's side and chimed.  
"Good!" Martin clapped.  
"Can I change its name?" Melissa asked. "Number four is so sterile. It really makes it feel like a robot."  
"Absolutely," Martin said. "It has natural language processing, so just tell it what you want and it'll do it. Configuration is through voice command, as well as an app on your phone."  
"Number four, I want to change your name to Spot," Melissa said.  
The dog chimed twice.  
"Two chimes indicate a successful configuration change," Martin said.  
"And one chime means the command it's doing is complete?"  
"Exactly."  
"Okay," Melissa said. "Spot, get me my cane."  
Spot walked around Melissa's chair, next to the cane. A small metal grabber claw extended from one of its front legs and picked the cane up. It backed up and walked to the front of the chair, held the cane in front of Melissa, and chimed.  
Melissa smiled and took the cane. "Good boy!"  
"You don't need to give it any praise or positive reinforcement," Martin said. "Remember that it's not a real dog."  
"But it won't hurt anything if I do?"  
"No, of course not. Again, it's like telling Alexa thank you. It has a programmed response, but it can't make it feel better."  
"What else can he do?" Melissa asked.  
"A full list of commands has been sent to the email address you provided, and here is a reference card. Number fo-" Martin corrected himself. "Spot, bring this to Melissa."  
Spot came to Martin, used the grabber to take the card from his hand, then walked over to Melissa and chimed.  
Mellisa took the card and ran her fingers over the surface, reading the Braille.  
"Wow, he can do a lot of stuff. I really love how he sounds right where the thing he's holding is," Melissa said. "It makes it so easy to get whatever he's got. No fumbling around or anything."  
"We've had years of accessibility and usability development. We partnered with Apple to develop the UX. They also assisted with retail packaging, but you won't have to worry about that with this pre-production unit."  
Melissa nodded. "Great. Anything else, then?"  
"Just a couple of signatures and you'll be all set." Martin touched Melissa lightly on the shoulder and held a thumb pad in front of her. Melissa felt for it, then pressed her thumb against it. It beeped.  
"Signature established for Melissa Flora May," the machine announced. "Document one of twelve awaiting confirmation."  
Martin handed Melissa another Braille sheet. Melissa read it, then thumbed the pad again.  
"Document one, accepted. Document two of twelve awaiting confirmation."  
After the remainder of the documents and signatures, Martin plugged the thumb pad into its dock and said, "All done. We'll call daily for the first week just to check if everything is okay, then less frequently as time goes on. But you have lifetime tech support on this unit, so please feel free to get in touch if anything doesn't meet your needs."  
"Thank you, Dr. Martin." Melissa stood. "Spot, take me outside."  
The robot moved to Melissa's left side. A plastic handle rose from its back and it chimed. Melissa held the handle and Spot moved ahead, guiding Melissa to the door. It stopped in front of the closed door and the handle vibrated briefly. Once Melissa opened the door, Spot continued ahead, leading her out of the building to the street. It chimed.  
"Good boy, Spot." Melissa felt momentarily foolish for praising a robot, then decided she'd rather think of him more like a dog. "Now, Spot, let's go home."  
The robot made a buzzing sound and didn't move.  
"Ah, you don't know where home is, do you?" Melissa said. "Spot, take me to 115 Lawndale Road, unit 1. That's home."  
Spot chimed twice and led Mellisa down the street, stopping at the crosswalk until the "WALK" light lit up. It took a step, then paused again as a car approached to make a right turn. The car stopped and Spot and Melissa crossed the street and continued safely the rest of the way home.

#

Major Olson squinted to see the screen at Lieutenant Andries' workstation. "Looks like it's working so far."  
He clapped Andries on the shoulder. He's barely a kid, Olson thought. Guess we get more kids along with more computers. At least with the computers, we won't be sending nearly as many of these kids home in boxes.  
"It's located the landmine, sir," Andries said.  
"Advance and investigate," Olson said. "Nice and steady."  
"6642D," Andries said, "investigate anomaly Echo Bravo two-two-niner."  
A green checkmark notification flashed in the upper right corner of Andries' screen.  
"It's acknowledged the command, sir."  
Olson nodded and shifted his eyes to the big screen on the wall. The dog was a blip on the map approaching a red-shaded area. "Here's where we lost the others." The dog's icon moved inside the shaded area and the checkmark flashed on Andries' screen again.  
Cheers rose inside the room.  
"All right, all right!" Olson waved his hands. "Quiet down, now. This one's gotten the farthest so far, but we don't know if it'll be able to complete the mission and defuse the mine. We don't know what the failure points are from this point on."  
"It's waiting for orders, sir," Andries said.  
"Give the order."  
"Yes, sir. 6642D, disarm the mine."  
The room was silent as everyone watched the dog on the map. It moved deeper into the red-shaded danger zone and stopped. After about a minute and a half, another green checkmark flashed on Andries' screen and the shading on the map disappeared. The dot representing the dog remained.  
The room erupted into cheers again, and this time, Olson did nothing to stop them.

#

Timmy Maxwell fell to the ground, hard. Sonny Mitchell, who all the kids at school knew as "Ham" for some reason, stood over him.  
"Not so cocky now without your guardian angel, huh?" Ham sneered.  
A garden shed stood several yards away. There was a loud thump and the door shook in its frame. Timmy glanced at it, then looked back up at Ham.  
Timmy's voice was shaky with fear. "It's still recording you. No matter what you do to me, it'll send the recording to my parents and the police."  
"Yeah?" Ham reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small antenna, broken at the base. "How's it going to send it now? Morse code?" Ham laughed and kicked Timmy in the ribs.  
Timmy grunted in pain and doubled up, trying to roll away. He tucked his head under his arms, then Ham kicked him in the stomach. Timmy involuntarily clutched at his midsection, then rolled out of the way as Ham tried to kick his face, and he noticed a small, blinking light at the back of Ham's pant-leg.  
Hope swelled in Timmy's chest. The thumping from the shed continued.  
Ham bent down and grabbed Timmy by the hair, then dragged him farther away from the shed. Timmy didn't know whose yard they were in, but apparently nobody was home because nobody was coming outside to see what was happening.  
Timmy wished the dog wasn't programmed not to destroy any property. It was equipped with tools to cut its way out, but it wouldn't destroy somebody else's shed. He grabbed at Ham's hand, still yanking his hair, and tried scrambling to keep pace as Ham dragged him.  
Ham threw him back down and drew his leg back to kick Timmy again. There was a barely audible whirring, then a crackling noise, then Ham sprawled backwards, two gray metal dogs pinning him down in the grass. One of them had a Taser attachment on its front leg and was just removing it from Ham's chest as Timmy sat up to see what happened.  
Ham cried out and twitched on the ground. Timmy got to his feet and stood over Ham, thinking about returning the abuse, but he knew that this encounter was still being recorded, and he needed to make sure that he was completely innocent in the footage. Ham looked up at Timmy, looking afraid.  
A third dog approached the shed and used its grabber claw to remove the branch that was shoved in the lock hasp near the door, then Timmy's dog pushed the door open and ran to him.  
It scanned his vitals and determined that Timmy was okay, then it extended its telescoping docking connector and docked with one of the other dogs. An LED on its head flashed orange three times, then went out. Then the other dog flashed an orange LED three times. Timmy's dog placed one of its legs on Ham's chest and the other dogs backed away.  
Blue and red LEDs flashed an alternating pattern on Timmy's dog's head, indicating that the police were on their way.  
Timmy held his stomach and sat down in a patio chair and waited for them. Ham didn't move at all until they came.

#

Colonel Olson looked at himself in the mirror. He felt like he’d aged fifty years in the last decade. His hair was mostly gone. His eyes were bloodshot. He had lost too much weight. His ulcer gnawed at his guts all day, every day. And he was wrong about not sending boys home in boxes.  
He splashed water on his face, then dried his hands and straightened his uniform. He checked his reflection one last time, then went to the conference room. This wasn’t his first talk at the White House since most of the infantry was replaced with dog and drone divisions.  
He stood at the podium and waited for the projector to sync with his tablet. When his slide appeared on the screen behind him, Olson spoke.  
“With men on the ground trying to kill other men, there’s conscience to deal with. Guilt. The horror of killing and war and the terror of being killed. Basic human emotion and the instinct to survive.”  
An old picture of a traditional human infantry squad appeared on the screen, filthy and exhausted, but smiling at the camera.  
“No dogs – no autonomous drones at all – deal with any of those. They are programmed with mission parameters and targets and they executed those orders to the letter with question or no regard to self-preservation.”  
Olson clicked the remote and a short video ran of a group of about eight dog drones running through a ruined city street. One by one, they were disabled by enemy fire until only one remained. It ran into a building, out of view, then the building exploded.  
“Now that every military force – even the small terrorist cells – had dogs, most of the action in most of the battles was drones fighting drones. When one drone goes down, the nearest dog in the best condition automatically receives any special orders the disabled robot might have been programmed with. It can strip the disabled dog down and integrate any special components onto its own chassis, then take over whatever mission the disabled dog had been running.”  
A video played showing a dog blown in half. LEDs on its head blinked sporadically. An undamaged dog ran up to it and, using its grabber claw, smoothly removed several modules from the downed dog’s frame and installed them on its own. Then it held one of its front legs against the disabled dog’s head. There was a soft but violent pop as the broken robot’s head exploded, then the newly equipped dog scanned the battlefield and ran off.  
“It destroys the CPU of the disabled dog once it assumes its instructions and attempts to complete the mission. This sort of transfer takes place recursively until there are no dogs left or the mission is completed.”  
Olson brought up the next slide, which showed a dog with a menacing design, bristling with antennae and small missile and grenade launchers.  
“We’re dealing with more and more sophisticated enemy dogs, better able to sniff out our signal stations. Thankfully, our encryption technology is strong enough that dogs can’t hack other dogs, but our manned communication posts are being destroyed at an alarming pace.”  
Olson clicked again and showed a chart of human casualties over the last twelve years, showing a sharp dip in number of deaths and injuries when military use of dogs began and remaining low for several years, then sloping steeply upward after that, indicating higher numbers of casualties than before the dogs were adopted.  
“Once both sides of a battle are mostly drones, human casualties decreased drastically. Then the mission became to locate drone control centers and destroy them.”  
The next slide showed a military camp – destroyed, smoldering, smoking.  
“We’ve drastically reduced the amount of infantry and active combat soldiers, but we’ve also increased our numbers of operators, programmers, testers, project managers, and other support staff. The military’s combat force has transformed into an IT force, so instead of one squad of nine soldiers being taken out by enemy fire, the hostiles track our signal back to base and destroy it, eliminating all of that staff. That could be upwards of eighty people.  
“The cost of losing our technicians and operators and strategists is now higher than the cost to make the dogs think for themselves on the field. We’re requesting funding for implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence in our dogs, so we don’t need to be in constant contact with them to give them instructions and monitor their progress. Gentlemen, if you’ll look at the handouts in front of you…”

#

Tim Maxwell looked at his new business cards. “Senior Architect, Mechanized Autonomous Intelligence Development, Genuflexion, LLP.” The department was known as the MAIDs to the press.  
“Tim? I’m Major Paula Roberts.” Paula shook Tim’s hand. “Good to be working with you. I understand that you’ve been working with the dogs for quite a while.”  
Tim nodded. “Since I was a kid. My dog saved my life. I’ve been tweaking them and hacking them and working on them ever since. Genuflexion noticed me when my dogs kept winning their sprint races, then I got to work on them professionally. It’s a dream come true.”  
Paula smiled. “That’s good to hear. So you’re good at making them fast?”  
“I’m good at making them do anything.”  
Paula raised an eyebrow at Tim. “Well, let’s see what we can do in this partnership.”  
“I’m looking forward to it.”  
“How long have you been with Genuflexion?” Paula asked.  
“Seven years.”  
“Did they get you right out of college or something?”  
“No,” Tim said. “They actually got me while I was still in high school. I consulted until I graduated, then I came on full time.”  
“And now you’re top dog, as it were.”  
“I guess so.” Tim grinned. “Top dog. That’s funny. What are we working on now?”  
“Machine learning.”  
“My specialty.” Tim was bluffing a little. He didn’t have a ton of experience with machine learning but he was confident that he could pick it up quickly enough once development work started.  
“Good to hear, although we have a team of developers who will be working under you. This will not be a solo project.”  
Tim nodded. He didn’t have a lot of experience working on teams at all, much less large teams with military structure. He wasn’t going to admit any of this to the Major, though. “Sounds good. Working in R+?”  
“Correct.”  
“What’s the first feature we’re doing?”  
“Adding a power-saving feature to sentry mode. When they’re guarding something or monitoring something at night when they can’t recharge with their solar cells, we need them to go into a power-saving mode with a trigger to wake themselves up, like movement or sound,” Paula said.  
“Yeah, we can do that, I think. The onboard instruments are certainly sensitive enough, and I don’t think their power consumption will be high enough to be a big drain. And they only go into power-saving mode when there’s no external power source available? Solar or plug-in or whatever?”  
“Correct,” Paula said. “We have a full design brief for you to review.”  
“Great. Well, let’s get to it.”

#

Tim looked at the code on his screen and shook his head. He added a comment to the developer. “Duration for staying active before entering sleep mode is hard-coded to 1000 seconds. This should be configurable.”  
Tim spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing more code from his development team. After a year, he had finally gotten his team to work the way he wanted. Running the team was going smoothly, but Tim was antsy. Out of the millions of lines of code he’d looked at since accepting his new position, less than a hundred were his. He was spending all of his time in meetings, leading the team, clarifying requirements, and reviewing and merging code. He didn’t have any time to develop any features himself and that frustrated him.  
After sending the rejected code back to the developer who had written it, Tim stood and stretched. He got a cup of coffee, knowing that he wasn’t going to drink it, just to have an excuse to walk around the office for a couple of minutes.  
When Tim got back to his desk, a response to his earlier comment had been made. “User can’t configure this value. 1000 seconds is based on the threshold from the battery hardware. If the user can set, unit could discharge battery by taking too long to enter sleep mode, or prevent the battery from syncing with the signal processor by not taking long enough. I did move the value to constant ACTIVE_SENTRY_MODE_DELAY_BEFORE_SLEEP so it’s easy to change at the code level.”  
Tim sighed. The developer had a valid point – they were dependent on the battery supplier for some settings, but he didn’t like values being set arbitrarily. A change in battery suppliers could necessitate a change that value, but with military contracts, he knew changing the battery supplier was highly unlikely. He accepted the code and merged it into the master codebase. He supposed a constant was a “good enough” solution. “Perfect” never gets done. “Good enough” gets the bills paid. Tim thought about putting that on a t-shirt.  
Tim’s watch buzzed. Fifteen minutes until the daily status meeting. He pulled up the list of requirements still waiting to be developed and looked for a small one that hadn’t been assigned to anyone. “MAID-8393: Remote firmware upgrade.” It was sized as a 3-point requirement – somewhere between a couple of hours and half a day to complete.  
“I could finish that in a day.” Tim was talking to himself. “Even with all the other stuff I gotta do, I could get that in a day.” He right-clicked the card for the requirement and hovered over the “Assign to me” link, hesitating. If I don’t claim it, someone else might grab it and work on it. If I do claim it, Paula will see my name on something and she might ask me to give it to someone else. But I need to code something! He left the it unassigned and created a new code branch on his local machine to start work on it, labeled it “feature/8393”, then got up and went to his meeting.  
The fifteen-minute status meeting took over an hour, making it lunch time when Tim finally returned to his desk. His next meeting wasn’t until four, so he had three and a half solid hours when he could work on this new requirement. He put his headphones on, played an old record by Bleachers, and got to work. He worked on the feature until his watch notified him that his next meeting was coming up. The trickiest part of the problem was making sure that different models of dogs only processed the firmware updates targeted to their particular model – making sure that service dogs didn’t get firmware updates designed for recreational models, and so on. Determining the usage of a particular unit wasn’t a straightforward process. It was important enough and tricky enough that Tim was glad that he had selected this particular task.  
After the meeting, Tim got back to his desk and worked into the night to finish coding. When he was finished, he ran the full suite of tests and, when they all came back passing, committed his code and pushed it up to the main repository. He scanned the list of branches, clicked, “feature/maid-8393”, and merged it.  
It would take months to discover the problem, and by then, it would be too late to do anything about it.

#

Melissa May sat on a park bench, listening to her daughter and her friends run around and play. A cool breeze blew, feeling very refreshing on such a warm day. Melissa stretched and reached for her bag. She couldn’t quite reach it.  
“Spot,” she said, “bring me my bag, please.”  
The dog walked to the other side of the bench, picked up Melissa’s bag with its grabber, then returned to her side and chimed.  
“Thank you.” Melissa took her bag and opened it, looking for her bottle of water. She found it and took a drink.  
The giggling and laughing came closer and Melissa’s daughter ran up to her and threw her arms around Melissa.  
“Mommy!”  
“Yes, sweetheart?”  
“Everyone says that Spot is so old and they want to know when we’re going to get a new dog!”  
Melissa smiled. “I’ve had Spot for a very long time, and he works just fine. We don’t need to get a new dog. Spot’s a part of the family!”  
“But he’s ooooooold!”  
“Are you going to get rid of me when I’m old?” Melissa asked.  
“Well, no…”  
“There you go. Now go play.”  
The laughter and running resumed.  
Melissa drank some more water, then opened her book and read, quickly skimming her fingers over the pages.  
Someone screamed from across the park, not the playful shrieks of happy children, but a scream of real terror. Melissa stood and reached her hand out. Spot extended its handle and slipped it into Melissa’s hand. More screams came from all around, peppered with sharp but muffled pops.  
“Mommy! Mommy, help!” Melissa’s daughter ran over and gripped her leg.  
“What’s happening?” Melissa asked.  
“I don’t know! All of the dogs! They’re hurting everyone! They punch their heads and their heads explode!” She sobbed. “What’s happening, mommy?”  
“I don’t know. Spot doesn’t seem to be affected.”  
Then Melissa collapsed as her leg erupted with pain.  
“Mommy!”  
Melissa rolled onto her back and felt her leg. She yanked her hand back when she touched it, shocked with pain. Something had been shot into her leg, probably several somethings.  
“Spot! Take Jess to Beth’s school and bring them both home!”  
The dog chimed and moved toward Melissa’s daughter.  
“Mommy, no!”  
“Go with Spot, Jess! Go now! I’ll meet you at home, okay? Be a good girl and go for me. Get your sister and go.”  
“Mommy, no!” Jess called again, her voice getting farther away as Spot ushered her out of the park.  
Melissa heard dogs approaching. She scrambled on her back, trying to get under the park bench. She felt a cold metal leg touch the back of her head, then she was gone.

#

Spot and Jess ran through the streets, ducking into alleys and cutting through yards whenever they could, heading for Beth’s school. Dogs were attacking all around, cutting down people and dogs and cats, even a policeman and police horse.  
Jess tried to keep her eyes closed but she almost let go of Spot’s handle when she did, so she had to run through the carnage, taking in all of it. She felt like she was going to throw up.  
It was quiet when they finally reached the school. Jess tried walking as quietly as she could, creeping up the steps to the front doors. They had been secured with metal chains. Heavy padlocks locked the chains together.  
Jess looked at the door, then to the left and right. “How do we get in?” She wanted to call out to her sister, to an adult, to anyone, but she knew she couldn’t let the other dogs hear her.  
She remembered something her sister said about a stairwell where the bigger kids snuck out to smoke, then walked around the school and checked each of the stairwell doors. They were all locked, until she found one that stunk like cigarette smoke. The ground around it was littered with cigarette butts. Jess tried the handle and the door opened. She squeaked with relief, then clapped her hand over her mouth and looked around. Nothing seemed to have noticed her.  
She slipped through the door and closed it behind her as quietly as she could, then crept through the deserted hallways, looking for a sign that anyone was here. In the center of the school, where the cafeteria was, the windows were blacked out. It smelled like fresh spray paint. Jess stood still and listened. There was definitely noise coming from inside the cafeteria. She approached the cafeteria doors and tapped on the glass, trying to stay quiet but still be loud enough for someone inside to hear.  
“Hello?” she whispered. “Is anyone in there?”  
“Is someone out there?” A voice came from the other side of the door.  
“Yes! Yes! Please, help!”  
The door opened a crack, then immediately closed again.  
“She’s got a dog with her.”  
“Not attacking?” another voice asked.  
“Not yet.”  
The door opened again. Two students grabbed Jess by the arms and yanked her inside the cafeteria as two teachers rushed out, one carrying a fire extinguisher, the other carrying a fire axe. The teacher with the extinguisher sprayed foam all over Spot and the other raised the axe above his head.  
“No!” Jess cried. “No, he’s good! He hasn’t hurt anyone!”  
The teacher brought the axe down hard against Spot’s neck, severing his head from his body. Then he kicked Spot over with his foot and chopped Spot’s body with the axe.  
Jess screamed and cried until one of the students holding her put his hand over her mouth.  
“Jess! Hey, that’s my sister!” Beth ran over to them. “Let her go, okay? Jess, don’t cry. You have to be quiet or they’ll hear us, okay? If you be quiet, he’ll let you go.”  
Jess nodded, and the boy let her go. She ran into Beth’s arms. “They killed Spot.”  
“I know, Bell, I know. We can’t let any dogs be around here. The others might be able to track them and find us. They just couldn’t take the chance, okay? Are you okay?”  
Jess tried to stop crying, but couldn’t. “Mommy said she’d meet us at home. She told me to come here and find you and she’d meet us at home. We have to go home.”  
“We can’t go home,” Beth said. “We have to stay here as long as the dogs are out there. We have food and water here, and there’s enough space for everyone, and we should be able to keep the dogs from getting in here, even if they get inside the school. We’re safe here, okay?”  
“We’re not safe anywhere,” Jess said. “Not anywhere.”

#

“…urges you to remain indoors and not go near any robots,” the lady on the TV said. “If you have any dogs in your home that are charging, make sure they’re unplugged and drape a heavy, dark blanket over them to prevent them from charging with solar energy. Do not go outside. This message will repeat.  
“Dog units from version 2.1 and onward have been upgraded with military counter-terrorism firmware. The defect seems to have originated at Genuflexion, due to an incorrect update being applied to the system. The dogs seem to be targeting all living creatures, which is consistent with the counter-terrorism infiltration directive. The older, white-framed units do not have remote firmware update capability, so they should remain safe with their original programming. The military urges you to remain indoors…”


End file.
